Hi! We’re Kausi (“cow-see”) and Max (“max”) - two graduates from the Integrated Product Design Masters program at the University of Pennsylvania.
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As product designers, we understand the value of quick and rapid prototyping - it allows you to understand how your concepts might work in the real world, validate whether it addresses the problem you’re trying to solve, and make improvements. It’s a super fun process that involves building things with your hands and with the resources that you have around you.
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As toy designers, we see the value of this process in teaching kids not only problem solving skills, but also how to bring their creative ideas to life.
However, we quickly realized that the tools that make rapid prototyping quick and easy for adults are not accessible by kids - they are either too dangerous or too complex. Cutting cardboard is so tedious, they prefer to not use it as a material at all.
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We’re here to fix that!
March 2022 - Kausi coming up with the original InvenTABLE concept
She first came up with InvenTABLE in a class for the Integrated Product Design Masters program. The goal was to address the growing trend in education of teaching kids design thinking skills.
May 2022 - Max comes on board as a co-founder
Max (and Milo, his 2 year old son and our Chief Testing Officer) joined the team in the summer of 2022 to turn Kausi's original prototype, held together mainly by duct tape, into something that actually works. We tested this first prototype at the Philadelphia Maker Faire!
October 2022 - Re-designing our prototype
We designed and re-designed our prototype over the course of several months using feedback from testing sessions.
September 2023 - Launching on Kickstarter!
After tons of testing & iterating based on feedback, we were finally ready to launch! We launched on Kickstarter and were completely blown away by the response.
October 2023 - Growing our team & continuing to get feedback
We're still testing at places like the Bay Area Maker Faire, The Franklin Institute, and The Please Touch Museum to get feedback from parents, kids, and educators as we finalize our DFM.
